In the Century of the Common Man, the grandeurs and miseries of war were
extended to more and more of the hitherto underprivileged. The guns of
August (1914) ushered in universal conscription to sustain the mass
armies. The warplanes of 1939 ensured a mass distribution of war to
civilianssadly changed from keeping the home fires burning to putting
them out. Such thoughts are provoked by Angus Calder's The People's
War.